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gime and the dawn of political liberalism, handled himself with the same aplomb in sweeping syntheses as in his archival work. He is an example of a historian with an equal capacity for research as for divulgation, with comparable efficiency in a local monograph and a synthesis that encompasses an entire country (his), a state (Spain) or even all of Western Europe. Proof of this is his contribution to the Història dels Països Catalans (1980), in which he wrote everything on the region of Valencia from the 18th to 20th centuries, and through this project I am personally able to attest to how gratifying it was to work with him. Other subsequent examples of sweeping syntheses were his book Agricultura y crecimiento económico en la Europa occidental moderna (1992) and the one entitled El Siglo de las Luces (2007), an outstanding social history of the culture where he examines the culture of both the elites and the lower classes in the Enlightenment and
In Memoriam
18th-century superstitious in Spain. His most remarkable recent contributions were to the history of the population of the city of Valencia and its outlying area, the Horta, in the history of this city, which he published in 2009. Manuel Ardit was a translator of classical texts, including several by James Casey and Robert Darnton, as well as the biography of the historian Marc Bloch written by Carole Fink. Regarding tributes to the masters of the previous generation, we should recall that in 2002 he compiled a variety of works by Emili Giralt under the title of Empresaris, propietaris i vinyaters: 50 anys de recerca històrica. Faithful to the language that unites Catalonia and the region of Valencia, a historian bowing to an open concept of the Catalan-speaking lands, and influenced in his earliest works by Joan Fuster, Manuel Ardit was a figure respected by all, a researcher who remained active and published until the end, shortly before a cruel illness deprived us of his aid and his friendship.
Gregori M. Estrada (1918-2015)* The 18th of March 2015 marked the death of Father Gregori M. Estrada i Gamissans, who was born in Manresa on the 28th of April 1918. During his early years, he lived in Mas Rossinyol in the town of Monistrol de Calders, and he continued to spend his summers there until his parents decided to send him to the Boys’ Choir of Montserrat, where he spent six years, from September 1926 until September 1932. That was the era of Abbot Antoni M. Marcet, when there were serious conflicts between the monastery and the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, which accused the Abbot of being a Catalanist. The dictatorship wanted to remove him from the monastery, but a new era dawned with the proclamation of the Second Republic in April 1931, which ended tragically in July 1936 with the outbreak of the Civil War. The war could have had much more serious consequences for Montserrat had it not kept up such outstanding relations with the authorities of the Generalitat, which protected the monastery and helped the monks escape, some of them seeking refuge abroad. Francesc Estrada – this was his given name – had two outstanding teachers in the Boys’ Choir who cultivated his musical talent and set him on a pathway which he would never abandon. They were Father Àngel Roda-
* Text prepared by Josep Massot, president of the History-Archaeology Section of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. E-mail: direccio@pamsa.cat
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milans, then the prefect of the Boys’ Choir, who would later be assassinated in Sabadell in 1936, and Father Anselm Ferrer, the director of the school, with whom Father Gregori would be close with until the former’s death in 1969. He also received musical training from other monks who worked with the Boys’ Choir, including Father Maur Fàbregas (musical theory), Father Isidor Civil (violin), Father Isidor Fonoll (prefect after Àngel Rodamilans) and Father Plàcid Feliu (also the prefect during the last few weeks of Estrada’s stint in the Boys’ Choir). In 1932, when he stopped being an acolyte, Francesc Estrada entered the school for aspiring monks in Montserrat, and in July 1933 he went from being a student to a novice at the monastery, where he took the monastic name of Gregori Maria. On the 6th of August the following year, he took his vows as a monk on Montserrat, and he immediately began to further his music studies, which he had never abandoned. In 1935 and 1936, he embarked upon organ studies at the Conservatory of Barcelona’s Liceu Opera House under the direction of Father Josep Muset. In early July 1936, he was temporarily sent for health reasons to the residence that Montserrat had in Andorra at that time, and there he was taken by surprise by the military uprising on the 17th to 19th of the same month and the revolution which sprang up all over Catalonia. He and other Catalans immediately travelled to Turin, from which, through Genoa and Roma, he joined Abbot Marcet and a group of monks from Montserrat at the monastery of Subiaco. The entourage from Montserrat had had to abandon Barcelona, and along with other young monks – accompanied by Emilià Riu, the prefect of the juniors of Montserrat – they took refuge in the
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